After leaving Annabel’s home, I moved over to Mary Laurie’s place again. It will be nice to stay with her again but I will miss my nice room and bath at Annabel’s.It’s 5:30 PM and I’m sitting on a bench in Kensington Park along the Flower Walk. I walked to this area to see the Albert Memorial. Although it is huge, it is completely covered by even longer scaffolding. The Park is large and has lots and lots of trees. The Peter Pan statue is especially cute, the way it is situated with wildflowers nearby. Earlier, I had Pepsi and a scone in the Orangery (during teatime) after having a tour of Kensington Palace and its gardens. The annuals in the sunken gardens had not yet been planted so some areas were bare but the roses and other perennials made it look nice.
It’s very pleasant to be away from the traffic. I can hear it in the distance (not far enough in the distance). The Palace tour was okay. They had a much better Acoustiguide than Westminster Abbey -- this morning’s tour. I’m convinced that these people enjoy doing things with dead bodies of royalty, or even non-royalty, digging them up two years after death, dragging the body through the street, dismembering, beheading -- what’s the point? I don’t get it. The torturing stuff is bad enough but why bother doing the other stuff, especially when they are already dead? The effigies of everyone is even ghastlier! It’s like the wax museum. I don’t see the point. Needless to say, I have no interest in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, even if it is one of the most popular places in town.
The Abbey was beautiful but too crowded and I liked Poet’s corner the best, as well as the choir screen. Charles Dickens deserved a little more embellishment on his stone. At least the National Portrait Gallery had a very nice portrait of him. Someone needs to change the Acoustiguide, though, because it's the only one that I've used that I could not follow without difficulty. All the others were very easy to use.
I’m really feeling like I’m always on a train to get somewhere. Everywhere I want to go involves taking several trains. I can’t wait to get home and see my dog again and play with her and hold her. I’m never leaving her again. This is the last vacation without her.
This morning I called my boss and only talked for a minute or two. He’s going shopping today and meeting friends tomorrow so doesn’t have time for visiting me. That’s fine because I didn’t really want to have to wear my dress black shoes anyway. I brought them and some dress black pants to wear in case he asked me to tea or lunch. I can't very well wear a t-shirt and jeans or shorts to a nice restaurant.
Back to the Palace tour. The dress collection was stunning. They had a display of all the articles of clothing and accessories that a man would wear to court when meeting the king. In one window display were the underclothes (very interesting) and the other, the outer clothes. It was a lot of stuff - no wonder they needed help getting dressed. I really liked seeing those men’s underclothes!
I decided to take a walking tour of Mayfair at 7:15 pm. I didn’t like it at first but after I started talking to others and met a nice Bostonian named Amy (with whom I had chips and later walked with to the tube station), things got better. Most of the people were American. We met at Green Park tube stop right near the Ritz. We saw homes of famous Londoners, too many to remember.
When I got back to my room, there was a message that my boss called to invite me to breakfast in the morning. So I called him back and arranged to meet him at 9:00 am outside of the restaurant at The Ritz. How about that?! There I was looking at the Ritz from the outside with a bunch of other tourists on a cheap walking tour - now I’m planning to go into the famous hotel for Sunday breakfast tomorrow! I’ll have to leave a note for Mary - I hope she’s not offended that I’m going somewhere else for breakfast.
